


silences, trinkets, non-goodbyes, and other things they don't talk about when they talk about love

by newsbypostcard



Series: En Promenade [2]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Academy Era, Child Loss, Grief/Mourning, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-07
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-02-17 17:51:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2318108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newsbypostcard/pseuds/newsbypostcard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The seconds that followed were excruciating as Leo’s memory flooded back to him: Jim had requested assignment in deep space for the semester. Jim had, by some miracle, been granted a posting on the USS Farragut. Jim’s last day in California had been yesterday. Jim was leaving <em>this goddamn morning</em>.</p><p>And Jim had left him the only personal item, apart from his battered leather jacket, that meant any damn thing to him.</p><p>(Scenes from the Academy)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 2256 - February

**Author's Note:**

> Scenes from Starfleet Academy, written about [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/865994). I was meant to write a complete sequel, but I don't think it's gonna come together quite that easily, so we have a few ficlets in chapters instead.

**February, 2256**

Upon walking home from Spock’s shortly after sunrise, Nyota heard the sound of distantly shattering glass. She paused to try to identify the source of the noise, then crept toward the nearest dorm, only to find Leonard McCoy angrily throwing rocks on the roof of the structure.

She watched for a second, torn. She could continue her silent, solitary slink home, where she would have no chance of being interrogated as to her whereabouts -- she hated to lie to Leo, and she wasn’t about to tell him she’d been sleeping with her former instructor -- or she could find out what the hell he was doing alone on a roof on a Saturday morning without Jim Kirk trailing like a puppy behind him, as per usual.

She decided, and stepped one foot forward as though to carry on home; and then she realized that this roof was not _any_ old roof, but was in fact the roof to the dorm of that same James T. Kirk. It was an address she’d long since memorized with the aim to avoid as much as humanly possible within weeks of his arrival on campus, and she had a sudden feeling that it wasn’t a coincidence that Leo was here now.

Uhura sighed, set down her bag, and leapt to grab the nearest fire escape platform above her head. Moments later, she’d picked up a rock of her own, slid up beside him on the roof, and tossed it at the remnants of a glass bottle he was aiming at without saying a word.

Leonard looked at her miserably before carrying on his ritual. “Late night?” he asked, several throws later.

“Early morning,” she responded, reaching down to grab another handful from the graveled roof. “You?”

“Never slept.” He tossed another rock; it missed the bottle by a mile.

Nyota gave him a side-eyed glance, then opted to let him talk in his own time. Ten minutes of rock-throwing passed before she was finally startled out of what had turned out to be quite a relaxing trance by the sound of his voice.

“Fucked Jim,” Leo had muttered; and Nyota frowned as she tried to ensure that what she’d heard had indeed been what he’d said.

“Mm?” She blinked and looked over at him, slowly. “And?”

Leo’s head slowly rotated to examine her expression. “You don’t sound surprised.”

“Should I be? Haven’t you been together for months?”

Leo blinked, several reactions fighting amongst themselves on his face. “No,” he said slowly. “Has Jim been crowing that around campus?”

“Actually, no. He’s never brought it up -- which is why I thought it was already happening. You see, _usually_ he states his intentions loudly and with no inhibition whatsoever when he’s trying to get with someone new!” Her smile rearranged itself into the familiar I-hate-Kirk quirk. “Are you telling me this is recent?”

“Yeah.” He wailed another rock across the roof. “Hours ago recent.”

“Oh!” Nyota was genuinely surprised. “Okay. And now you’re on the roof. Throwing rocks. At sunrise. By yourself. Not having slept.”

“Yep.” His teeth seemed to be systematically decimating his lip.

She regarded him with scrutiny and sat down on the ledge of the roof. “Did it not go well?”

“Oh, it went well.” Anxiety washed off him in waves and he threw three rocks out of his hand in quick succession, each with progressively more force. “It went way the fuck better than I expected, somehow.”

Nyota watched him pick up another handful of rocks, throw them, and repeat the cycle. “Leo,” she began softly. “Do you have feelings for Jim?”

Leo turned suddenly on his heel to face her entirely, mouth pressed into a thin line, eyes dark and panicked at the suggestion.

“Oh my god,” she said slowly, a grin spreading gradually over her face. “You _love_ him.”

Leo gave a growl of frustration deep in his throat and turned completely away under the guise of finding more rocks to throw. “Let’s not get carried away,” he said gruffly.

“You _do_!”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“I know you wouldn’t. That’s why I’m saying it for you. Oh, you poor bastard.”

He ran a nervous hand through his hair and mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like _tell me about it._

“This is a _good thing_ , Leo,” Nyota soothed.

“Not really,” he gritted.

“Why not?”

“Have you _met_ Jim?” Leo’s voice flitted up an octave with the incline, and she barely bit back a giggle.

“Unfortunately, I have,” she told him, stretching her feet out in front of her and trying to give off an air of relaxation in the hopes it would unwind McCoy a peg or two.

“Right,” he said, pointing at her without looking at her. “Everything you hate about him? That’s everything I realized about him the second he peeled away from me this morning.”

“He left?” Nyota was genuinely surprised. Yes, he was a runner. He fled. That was the Jim Kirk way. But she never expected he’d leave _Leo._

And indeed -- “No,” he corrected quietly. “I left. He just…” His expression suggested that he thought he sounded rather like an idiot. “...rolled over to go to sleep.”

“Oh,” she breathed sympathetically. “Oh _dear_.”

“Stop saying that,” he murmured; then suddenly he gave a wrenching cry of frustration and shot his handful of rocks in the opposite direction. “Fuck! I’m pissed off at myself for giving in, for somehow not remembering who Jim Kirk actually is. I let myself be blinded by his bullshit charm. I hate that fucking noise, what the hell is wrong with me.”

“You’re just freaking out,” she assured him.

“Aw gee, really? You don’t say.”

“No, that’s not what I mean.” She paused as he took the opportunity to throw several more rocks, no longer aiming for the bottle at all but now just looking for some release of energy. “I mean that you got the thing you wanted most in the world, and now you’re panicking about it. That’s _okay,_ Leo,” she emphasized as he turned to her with a grim expression. “It’s not ideal, I mean, you could get over yourself and just enjoy something good for once in your life instead, but -- let me finish,” she overrode over Leo’s indignant stammers, brandishing a finger in the air; and Leo faltered into exasperated silence. “This actually makes sense. Look, what are you worried about, specifically?”

Leo stared at her for several long moments before finally biting out, “He’ll find something better.”

“No,” Nyota said instantly. “He won’t. As far as he’s concerned, there isn’t anything better out there than you.”

“Bullshit,” Leo spat. “Jim doesn’t make those kinds of judgments. It’s about moving onto the next best thing with him.”

“Except where you’re involved,” she countered. “Hey, stop, listen. You, Leonard McCoy, are _literally_ the _only_ person on _Earth_ he has ever commed twice. _Ever._ He had _Gaila_ on the hook -- _an Orion,_ Leonard, we’re talking one of the sex goddesses of the universe -- and he didn’t comm her back. I’m willing to bet a week’s salary that he commed you instead, like he always does, because he likes to talk to you daily like a big loyal puppydog. All this, I might add, from someone who doesn’t even talk to his mom more than once a year.”

Leo frowned as though he was acquiring new information, and Nyota waved a dismissive hand. “He runs his mouth sometimes when he’s trying to convince me to like him. My point is that he’s going to keep coming back to you, Leo, whether you like it or not. Something about you got under his skin and _stuck_. He probably doesn’t know it yet, but my guess is that he’s just as head over heels in love with you as you are with him.”

Leo had softened considerably as she spoke. “I think I made a mistake,” he said anyway, chest still heaving with emotional effort.

Nyota smiled sadly up at him. “I don’t, for what it’s worth. You take a risk for love sometimes, Leonard. I think it’ll work out for you.”

His gaze wandered, embarrassed, as he huffed on, and Nyota smiled and got to her feet. “Take the time you need to take. Avoid him for a few days if you can possibly manage it. Think things through. Make sure adrenaline isn’t pushing you in a bad direction -- and then unblock him from your comm and see how many unread messages you have. See if you don’t find evidence of Kirk having been in your quarters when you come back from a shift at the clinic -- yeah, I’ve heard you yelling about that. And when he eventually manages to find you -- and trust me, he will -- consider for a second that he actually put time and effort into a human being other than himself, and realize that you’re an exception to his usual rules. Lean into all that. Don’t take it for granted. I get the impression that he’s loyal as all hell when given the opportunity, and that you could be one such opportunity, if you wanted.” She shrugged. “But if you don’t, that’s okay too. He’s a loose cannon, and he’s got a lot of karmic shit coming his way. I won’t blame you for a second if you decide to walk away.”

Nyota gave a light wave and final encouraging smile in the face of Leo’s angst and confusion as she walked back toward the fire escape. She reflected briefly upon her own words -- that maybe if Jim was being this insistent on trying to make good with her, she might someday at least consider giving him half a chance -- and smiled as she made her way back to her quarters.

She collapsed in her desk chair and immediately drew her comm out of her bag.

 **Nyota Uhura to Spock**  
_2256.061 | 06.58:22h_  
Hey. I just ran into a friend who’s halfway up the wall with weird dating issues and I just wanted to tell you how much I appreciate you.

She breathed laughter to herself as she threw the comm on the desk, then unzipped her boots before grabbing a towel and stepping into the shower. 

Say what you wanted about her weird love life -- she _definitely_ preferred it compared to that faced by Leonard McCoy.


	2. 2256 - August

**August, 2256**

Jim carried a model of the USS Kelvin in his jacket pocket at all times.

Leo knew about it, of course. Leo also knew that Jim did not think Leo knew about it, so he never said anything. There were only so many times you could lean someone against a vertical surface for the purposes of ravaging the bejesus out of him before you notice the outline of a miniature ship through his clothing -- only so many times you had to strip him out of his clothes, for medical or sexual or drunken reasons, before it fell out of some wayward location and onto the floor. It was some combination of ancient and filthy, label barely visible with dirt and wear; but he didn’t need to be told it was the Kelvin. By the time he had a chance to take a long enough look at it, he knew the features of that ship inside and out.

Times Jim reached for the Kelvin were moments where he needed grounding: in the middle of a fistfight, that time he’d almost flunked out of a class because the professor took exception to the number of students in the class Jim tried to openly seduce in the lecture hall, whenever someone said the word ‘eugenics’, whenever Pike showed up and pissed Jim off. Leo rolled his eyes to the ceiling whenever Jim scanned his thumb along the ship’s contours, which seemed characteristic enough of himself not to arouse suspicion. He felt strongly that Jim deserved the privacy of a personal talisman. Everyone had their rituals.

The line of the ship’s plastic was the first thing that came into focus when Leo woke up.

“No,” Leo gravelled, voice barely activating through a blanket of sleep; then, more sharply, as though coming into focus along with the rest of the room: “ _Oh no you don’t._ ” 

His head was barely off the pillow, eyes staring at the place where Jim’s dumbass slack-jawed sleeping face had formerly been, now seeing only this fucking broken, grimy, unbearably misplaced piece of plastic. It was very early and this was very confusing. Leo was furious and he wasn’t sure why. 

“ _Jim!_ ” he shouted into the empty room.

The room said nothing back. Leo blinked around and determined that all traces of Jim had gone.

The seconds that followed were excruciating as Leo’s memory flooded back to him: Jim had requested assignment in deep space for the semester. Jim had, by some miracle, been granted a posting on the USS Farragut. Jim’s last day in California had been yesterday. Jim was leaving _this goddamn morning_.

And Jim had left him the only personal item, apart from his battered leather jacket, that meant any damn thing to him.

Profanity tumbled out of Leo’s mouth at a rate unparalleled since the months following his divorce as he stumbled out of bed and reached wildly around for the nearest items resembling clothing. “Bastard thinks he’s gonna die out there?” he muttered as he grabbed the Kelvin off his pillow and threw his door open. “Got another damn thing coming, I tell you what, I’ll kill him first, what in _god’s name_ \--”

Standing in the hallway, Leo realized he had absolutely no idea where Jim could possibly be.

Swearing anew, he stepped back inside and slammed the door behind him. Checking the time, he also realized distantly it was possible Jim had already left. Something like shame tinged at his cheeks for reasons he wasn’t clear on; should he have seen Jim off? He definitely should have seen Jim off. Things still felt very fuzzy. Was he supposed to be somewhere?

Leo reached for his comm and collapsed furiously into his desk chair, slapping the Kelvin unceremoniously on his desk.

 **Leo McCoy to Jim Kirk**  
_2256.233 | 08.09:11h_  
Your fool ass isn’t leaving without your Kelvin model, Jim. Where are you?

The flush was not leaving Leo’s face. He pressed a fist to his mouth and swallowed against the bile creeping in back of his throat and stared, angrily, at nothing in particular, waiting for his comm to chirp with his reply.

 **Jim Kirk to Leo McCoy**  
_2256.233 | 08.13:02h_  
already in the air, bones. keep it safe for me.

 **Leo McCoy to Jim Kirk**  
_2256.233 | 08.13:44h_  
Like hell I will. Come back and get it yourself. Don’t make me chase you down.

 **Jim Kirk to Leo McCoy**  
_2256.233 | 08.15:08h_  
you’d just stop me from going. i know im irresistible, bones, but someday youre gonna have to learn to let go.

Leo started drafting his reply -- _Not a chance. Space deserves you. But_ … But what? But a grown-ass man needs his toy plastic ship? Leo had had his moments of extreme condescension, he’d admit, but that seemed a little much.

 **Leo McCoy to Jim Kirk**  
_2256.233 | 08.18:53h_  
Not a chance. Space deserves you. But you’ll need to stay grounded up there. You know -- when the gravity controls fail you, as they inevitably will, and you wind up floating around free-limbed while your stomach contents evacuate themselves before your own eyes?

It was sent before Leo could do much about it. He rubbed at his eyes, kept his fingers over his face as he waited for the comm to chirp again.

 **Jim Kirk to Leo McCoy**  
_2256.233 | 08.20:34h_  
yeah, yeah, space is awful, i get it. listen, relax, you need it more than i do. something to remember me by.

Anger bit in Leo’s gut, and he sat upright with a growl before furiously composing his reply.

 **Leo McCoy to Jim Kirk**  
_2256.233 | 08.22:16h_  
You think deep space is gonna take you out, do you? You might go ten rounds with it, but you’re gonna come out on top. You hearing this? ‘Something to remember you by.’ Jesus Christ. Don’t think for a second you’re getting away from me that easily, boy.

Leo waited a few moments, then sent another one when he was unable to negotiate the feeling in his gut down:

 **Leo McCoy to Jim Kirk**  
_2256.233 | 08.27:23h_  
Try to get wounds that are easy to heal, would you? You’re not showing up at my door in three months expecting free medical care after you get your ass kicked by some pissed off Klingon in god knows what corner of space and the resident on board can’t figure out how to scan around your damn intrusive ego. The Starfleet handbook says you have to remain in one piece in order to finish in a timely manner, and I’ll be damned if I’m delaying my time in this godforsaken academy for you.

Leo stared at the Kelvin, feeling truly miserable, and tried again to blink himself awake.

 **Leo McCoy to Jim Kirk**  
_2256.233 | 08.28:29h_  
You drugged me so I wouldn’t wake up when you left, didn’t you.

He thought it was technically possible that Jim was just busy with _leaving the planet_ or some other such allegedly important matter, but for that reason or for another, he did not seem disposed to replying just then.

Leo buried his head in his hands for another minute, then sent off one final message before tossing the comm aside:

 **Leo McCoy to Jim Kirk**  
_2256.233 | 08.31:59h_  
Goddamn you, Jim.

With no less venom, he slapped the Kelvin down on top of his books and rambled clumsily off toward the shower. It was a long one, if full of familiar things like profound regret and a general sense of confusion and unease, but when he emerged out of the foggy heat of the bathroom he finally had his one-line reply:

 **Jim Kirk to Leo McCoy**  
_2256.233 | 08.48:22h_  
goddamn you too, bones. try not to lose my ship.

Strangely, Leo was not made to feel much better.

  
  


The next words Leo heard from Jim took four months and, though differently so, were no less excruciating to receive.

 **Jim Kirk to Leo McCoy**  
_2256.338 | 15.23:09h_  
dude. some asshole here with the diplomatic corps flinched hard enough when I dropped the name mccoy that I had to ask him if he knew you, and as it turns out, he hates your fucking guts! something about you ‘stealing his woman’? which I find fascinating. any insights? details please

Leo read the message and felt his stomach flop awkwardly between rising and sinking. He stared at the message for a solid two minutes before hazarding out the reply:

 **Leo McCoy to Jim Kirk**  
_2256.338 | 15.26:03h_  
Is his name Treadway.

 **Jim Kirk to Leo McCoy**  
_2256.338 | 15.27:19h_  
YES. bones!! you stole an entire woman? holy shit. I’m so happy. please explain

 **Leo McCoy to Jim Kirk**  
_2256.338 | 15.28:47h_  
Stop trying to bond with me about theft. And about women. Where are you?

 **Jim Kirk to Leo McCoy**  
_2256.338 | 15.29:53h_  
beta quadrant, delta orcus. some seriously cool shit out here, bones, i’ll have to bring you someday.

 **Leo McCoy to Jim Kirk**  
_2256.338 | 15.31:42h_  
You’re still on the Farragut? How in the hell did you reply so fast?

 **Jim Kirk to Leo McCoy**  
_2256.338 | 15.33:58h_  
I finally figured out how to hack a starfleet communications frequency. we’re direct! =D took me three months to figure this out, fucking ecstatic it finally worked

 **Leo McCoy to Jim Kirk**  
_2256.338 | 15.35:22h_  
Christ almighty. You looking to get yourself marooned on some frozen planet somewhere? Obey the rules, ingrate. Use direct channels like everybody else.

 **Jim Kirk to Leo McCoy**  
_2256.388 | 15.36:54h_  
stop griping. you missed me.

He did.

 **Leo McCoy to Jim Kirk**  
_2256.338 | 15.37:55h_  
Mostly surprised you’ve managed not to get yourself sucked into space yet.

 **Jim Kirk to Leo McCoy**  
_2256.338 | 15.39:13h_  
your lack of confidence wounds me. whatever happened to winning ten rounds with space?

 **Leo McCoy to Jim Kirk**  
_2256.338 | 15.41:18h_  
That’s just something you say. You didn’t take it as an encouragement, did you? Are you writing me from sickbay?

 **Jim Kirk to Leo McCoy**  
_2256.338 | 15.43:13h_  
bones, jesus. ye of little faith! i’m fine. so nice of you to ask. you don’t get to be pissed about my lack of communication when you didn’t bother either.

Jim had a point, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. Leo had sat down several times, at least once weekly and sometimes much more, with the intention of writing to Jim but without knowing what to say. The Academy is the same in every way, except that it’s not? Turns out “Everything’s fucked because you’re not here” is a terrible thing to try to put into words, but what else does he have to say for himself? He published two papers already this semester on his new research since Jim wasn’t here to run him into the bar every other day. Great, right? Only Leo didn’t give a hot damn. Too used to throwing himself into work to avoid negative emotion, Leo didn’t feel much about this accomplishment except that it represented a mighty absence. The messages invariably came out sounding too sappy or too terse, and Leo had accordingly abandoned the attempts, usually followed immediately by going either to the gym or back to the lab.

 **Leo McCoy to Jim Kirk**  
_2256.338 | 15.45:55h_  
I wasn’t pissed about the lack of communication, I was pissed you hacked a damn communications frequency. Doesn’t the Farragut need that?

 **Jim Kirk to Leo McCoy**  
_2256.338 | 15.48:32h_  
what for? we’re waiting for a diplomatic meeting on axanar tomorrow, all set up, nothing to comm. no problemo. you worry too much. tell me about this woman burglary.

Despite himself, Leo cracked a smile.

 **Leo McCoy to Jim Kirk**  
_2256.338 | 15.52:18h_  
It never happened. Clay Treadway and I had this inane rivalry in high school that culminated in me punching him in the face. He was being a jealous prick to Jocelyn, who was his girlfriend at the time, possibly because of some alleged cosmic destiny? I was critical of that noise, obviously, and Jocelyn married me instead, which for some reason he was pissed about. I see he hasn’t changed much in the _twelve damn years_ since the offending incident.

Jim’s reply took fifteen minutes, which Leo spent doing nothing but sitting in his chair and staring blankly at his comm. He realized that he’d done the same thing at 17 while waiting for Jocelyn to phone and felt the flush of embarrassment spread over his face, but also did not feel compelled to do anything to change his habit.

 **Jim Kirk to Leo McCoy**  
_2256.338 | 16:08:09h_  
!!! BONES I actually g2g, who knew, stuff happens suddenly in space, but would really appreciate it if you’d go ahead and comm me the rest of those details, DON’T WORRY ABOUT THE COMM CHANNEL i made precautions, because you in a fistfight sounds like need-to-know information. please use extreme specificity, leave nothing out.

Leo rolled his eyes and kicked himself back from his desk with a reluctant grin.

 **Leo McCoy to Jim Kirk**  
_2256.338 | 16:14:56h_  
Not really much of a fistfight, mostly luck if I’m honest. Jocelyn and I were forced to work together in one of those god-awful final projects senior year, and I tended to avoid speaking to others whenever possible. I kept my nose buried in a PADD until she surprised the hell out of me with some corny biology joke. She started a conversation that I felt contractually obligated to contribute to, since she was making an effort to get along with me, and we wound up having a lot in common. Struck up a passable friendship despite our different social statuses. This caused Treadway a lot of anguish and moaning, which I tended to undercut at every opportunity to Jocelyn’s reluctant entertainment and Treadway’s fury. Seven months later she asked me to dance at some school function, I accepted,  & Treadway descended upon me with great ire. He yelled at Joce, she told him she did what she liked, he put his hand on her, she protested, I removed it, he pushed me, I knocked him flat with a lucky shot, and Joce and I ran out of the dance never to really look back. The rest is history.

Leo tossed the comm aside and tried to frown down at his textbook. Instead, he found his eyes flickering back toward the comm with alarming frequency.

 **Leo McCoy to Jim Kirk**  
_2256.338 | 16:18.44h_  
What’s the Diplomatic Corps doing on the Farragut? Also, why are you talking about me out loud? Kindly refrain. I don’t need any of your slanderous commentary about me filtering its ways through Starfleet’s ranks.

Leo smirked and tried to contain his bizarre elation while scanning determinedly over the same lines in his book until something stuck. Eventually succeeded in not giving Jim or Treadway another thought until much later that evening, when Leo got his reply while he was pouring over his final notes one last time before the morning’s exam.

 **Jim Kirk to Leo McCoy**  
_2256.338 | 22.16:46h_  
Awesome. Long story re: the dippy corps. incompetent fucks. shit’s still happening. sorry. might be quiet for a while.

Leo frowned and realized suddenly that something might be going wrong.

 **Leo McCoy to Jim Kirk**  
_2256.338 | 22.18:04h_  
? Y’alright?

A dull ache of worry settled in his gut when Jim did not reply immediately, and only seemed to worsen every time he looked at his comm over the coming hours -- and, eventually, days -- to see no new messages from Jim. 

It would be three full days before he received any further contact -- and even then it was only a brief, deeply unsatisfying communication over the secure formal channels that said very little and did nothing to assuage his concerns:

**++**  
_**[Contact:]James T. Kirk to [Contact:]Bones McCoy** _  
**Transmission sent: 2256.340 | 17.49:06h**  
**Transmission received: 2256.341 | 23:46:57h local**

Combat initiated by Romulans at Axanar. Forced to return fire but trying to mediate. Communications channel accordingly seized back. Still alive so far.

Stop worrying.

Jim  
**++**

Leo did no such thing.

 

Leo spent his waking hours that weren’t devoted to exams in the clinic, hating the silence that slunk after him everywhere when alone, reminding him that there was no new information on the Farragut’s status, compelling him to manually refresh the already self-refreshing official channels feed just to make sure it wasn’t broken. 

On the day after he’d received Jim’s message, the information was clear: Communications were patchy but the ship was still intact. Dangerous airspace. Do not approach Axanar. Mediation in progress.

On the twelfth day after he’d received Jim’s message, the information was equally clear but significantly more infuriating: Communications were patchy but the ship was still intact. Dangerous airspace. Do not approach Axanar. Mediation in progress.

By day thirteen, Leo had finally crossed the line from ‘in hell’ to ‘beside himself’, and he decided to do something about it.

He spent six hours on the comm, most of which was spent on hold, trying to get through to communications so he could bully his way into finding out what was going on. To his chagrin, it was not generating any results. Officials seemed to have no additional information on what was going on, and Leo’s calm was shortlived.

“I’m not asking for a miracle here,” he barked into the phone as the seventh hour threatened. “I called them already. Short of kidnapping an admiral I’ve done every damn thing possible to get the information I need. … No, that wasn’t a threat, Jesus Horatio, do I sound like a mad man? Oh, I do, do I? Well listen here, if I’m such a madman and you’re not going to give me the information I’m looking for--” Leo opened the door, shuffling his feet into the nearest pair of shoes, “guess the only thing left for me to do is come over there myse--”

Leo looked up, the comm to his ear, to see Jim in the corridor, staring back at him.

Leo froze where he stood and took Jim’s appearance in slowly -- his uniform bloodied in places, his duffel bag thrown over his shoulder, evidence of injury still obvious on his face. He was looking at Leo with an expression that defied words, that deflated Leo instantly, and he let his arm fall to his side.

“Nevermind,” he muttered distantly as he flipped the comm shut.

“I didn’t know whether to knock,” Jim said quietly. He looked exhausted, stricken, and hesitant, and Leo was reminded of the day they’d met.

“You never knock,” he said. His voice sounded strange.

“You were on the comm.”

“Yeah. I was trying to find _you_.” Leo’s hand extended itself automatically to Jim’s chin before faltering just short of contact; but Jim predicted the intention and moved his head enough to the side to clearly show the scar still obvious along his jawline. “Who regenerated you?” Leo asked quietly, running ghosting fingers over the raised skin at last, almost afraid to touch and glad to feel something there.

“Some resident.” Jim’s eyelids fluttered shut with exhaustion. Leo watched for the flicker of electric blue to return beneath long eyelashes; felt relieved when it came. “Not half as good as you.”

“I’ll say. Come on in here and sit the hell down.”

Leo turned with some reluctance away from Jim, back into his room, toward his desk, his feet dragging as though weighted. He took too long to open the drawer on purpose to give himself enough time to compartmentalize his emotions. 

With his back turned, he heard the door shut quietly, followed by the sound of Jim’s bag hitting the ground. One boot hit the ground, and then the other; and as the smell of leather treatment wafted into his nostrils as Jim moved to settle himself on the bed, Leo -- at last -- was convinced Jim was actually there.

Jim’s feet dangled off the ground from where he sat on Leo’s bed. He flinched as he saw Leo turn toward him with both scanner and regenerator. “How long have you been back?” Leo asked quietly as he settled himself over Jim’s face.

“Two hours.” Jim let his eyes scan wearily over Leo. “Are you mad?”

Leo tilted Jim’s head gently to the side to evaluate a gash on his shoulder and said nothing. 

“Don’t bother with the regenerator,” Jim said after a moment, following Leo’s hand as it held the scanner, perfectly steady, a couple inches above his skin. “They wouldn’t let me leave the base before they’d patched me up, I don’t need more.”

“I’ll do what I like.”

Jim exhaled and let his chin fall onto his chest, exhaustion wafting off of him in great staggering waves. Leo worked in silence until he was satisfied Jim was showing signs as normal as could be expected, then reached for the regenerator. “You wanna tell me what happened?” he asked. 

Jim offered no resistance as Leo lifted his chin, this time without hesitation, steady and firm. This time, he stayed silent. Leo didn’t push, only worked on, moving to the other side of Jim’s face.

“You seem mad,” Jim said eventually, after silence had settled too thickly between them.

“Right now I’m just your doctor.”

“I didn’t come here for that.”

“You came here a little for that.”

Jim again opted not to reply, only continued to move malleably as Leo continued to manipulate him into the positions required to repair him properly. His hands remained steady as he shirked the jacket of Jim’s uniform off him, as he began regenerating the gashes on his chest that the resident hadn’t even touched; but his heart pounded absurdly in his chest, forcing the rest of his body to beat visibly in time with the force of it.

Jim watched him work, oddly fascinated as he always was with the functions of his own injured and healing body. It wasn’t until Leo straightened up again to tend to his shoulder that Jim looked him in the eye; then after a few silent moments, Leo holding his gaze as the regenerator did what it needed to at Jim’s shoulder, Jim reached gently forward, hooking his index finger fondly into the front pocket of Leo’s jeans. 

Leo jumped, despite himself; Jim looked up at him with a gentle smile. “Steady, Bones,” he muttered as the fingers of his other hand, too, tangled themselves in a beltloop; and Leo froze completely, momentarily torn right down the middle between professionalism and the urge to rip Jim’s clothes off to feel as much of his skin under his hands as possible.

Jim’s hand moved, its fingers curling around Leo’s hip. Leo’s hands twitched suddenly, just once, before steadying again; then suddenly the regenerator tumbled loosely onto the bed, both of Leo’s hands sliding steadily over Jim’s skin to cup his face with a peculiar conviction. 

“Goddamn you,” he rumbled, tremor sounding in his voice; and then he was climbing on top of him, kissing him with terrified restraint, hands scrambling to get as much of Jim under them as they could manage. “ _Goddamn you._ ”

Jim’s lips curved into a smile beneath his. “Bones,” Jim tried to say; and then Leo couldn’t take it, the restraint splitting open into abandon, and he took everything Jim’s mouth had to offer into him, every morsel, until he felt certain there wasn’t a word left in him.

“Where the hell have you _been,_ ” Leo breathed at last, forehead still pressed against Jim’s even as he fumbled with his belt. “Thirteen goddamn days without a word.”

“We couldn’t,” Jim said, sounding destroyed. His hand cupped the back of Leo’s neck, keeping him close. “We couldn’t, Bones.”

“That’s never stopped you before.” Leo’s hand moved under Jim’s shirt and then dipped into his waistband, lips brushing over his neck, his shoulder, his collarbone, mapping the landscape, finding his way home.

“I know.” Jim’s hands were at the button of Leo’s jeans, shakily working without success to get it undone, voice growing more haggard and desperate. “I’m sorry, and I owe you this conversation, Bones, I know I do, but I, oh, god, I _missed_ you, can we just--”

Leo moved his lips to Jim’s and swallowed the words, swallowed the break in his throat, swallowed the groan that followed -- swallowed as much as he could, with Jim’s hands curling over his neck and in his hair.

“Shut up, would you?” he rumbled against Jim’s lips, breathing stuttering in staccato.

And for once in his life, Jim did.


	3. 2256 -- December

_ December, 2256 _

“Hey, Bones.” Jim was lying on Bones’ bed, his feet propped against the wall as he held the PADD over his head.

Bones sighed from his desk, clearly annoyed with the interruption from his studies. “Yeah, Jim.”

“Want to come to Iowa for Christmas?”

Bones remained still.

“I’m just gonna hang out at my mom’s condo.”

Silence.

“I don’t think she’s gonna be there. She isn’t, usually. So it’d be just us.”

No movement.

“And, like, beer and old movies on holo.”

Nothing.

“We could talk to absolutely no one for the whole vacation. Two entire weeks.”

Nada.

“It just seems shitty,” Jim continued, throat feeling dry, “that we get five days over exam period together, and then more time apart. I dunno if you were gonna go to Georgia or stay here or what. Do that if you want. It doesn’t matter. You don’t have to come.”

“Yeah, Jim,” Bones said eventually, voice foreign. “I’ll come to Iowa.”

Jim fidgeted. “You don’t have to,” he said again.

“I want to,” and this time Bones’ voice was recognizably warm. “I’m kind of … struck that you asked.”

“You’re struck.”

“Yeah. I’m struck.”

Jim grinned and tilted his head until he was looking at Bones upside down. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“It means that you never allude to your wider life unless you’re very drunk. I’m surprised you want me there.”

Jim returned his gaze to his PADD. “Only you, Bones,” he said quietly.

Bones was again silent. “So that’s settled, then,” he said eventually.

“Yeah.”

“I’m comin’ to Iowa.”

“You’re comin’ to Iowa.” Jim smiled and tilted his head back again as he mocked Bones’ accent; but his entertainment was cut short as the PADD was snatched suddenly out of his hands, Bones ejecting himself out of his office chair and onto the bed in one fell movement.

“Well all right, then,” Bones said as Jim rolled fluidly on top of him.

“It’s nothing like your house in Georgia,” Jim warned him, running his fingers obnoxiously through Bones’ hair.

“Good,” Bones declared, and any further replies were lost in a tangle of lips and tongue.

\---  
\---

But of course, as with anything involving one James Tiberius Kirk, it wasn’t that fucking simple.

Leo was in the shower on the fourth day there when he heard a shrill scream -- female, by the sounds of it -- followed immediately by Jim shouting.

He froze, bracing to listen; then, abruptly, Leo shut off the water, swearing furiously as he hastened to tie a towel around his waist. Jim was still shouting, now in competition with another voice, and Leo’s mind raced with possibility as he burst back into the main section of the apartment.

“Jim!” he shouted. “What the devil is--”

He cut off as he found himself face-to-face with a tall, furious-looking woman clutching a bag closely to her chest. Her blonde-but-greying hair was bound tightly in a bun at the back of her head, and it added considerably to an impression of severity. “Oh, good,” she said sarcastically at the sight of Leo. “ _Good_ , Jim. Who’s this now?”

Jim sputtered a series of unconnected syllables, and Leo’s eyebrows shot up. “So you two know each other,” he drawled slowly, glaring at Jim.

The woman smirked. “Not as well as you might expect.”

Jim cut off. “Useful!” he proclaimed with annoyance.

“Accurate,” she replied drily, slowly forcing the tension out of her limbs as she set her bag on the table beside her.

“Is this really a conversation we’re going to have right now?”

“No, the conversation we’re going to have is why you feel you have the right to _break into my house_ \--”

Leo’s face contorted as he turned back toward Jim. “You _broke us in here_?”

“--without so much as _calling me_ to let me know you were coming home for the holidays for the first time in _eight years_ \--”

“Wait, is this your _mother?_ ”

Jim held both hands aloft, one palm facing each of them, and shut his eyes tight as he faced the floor. “I can’t deal with both of you yelling at me right now. Can you at least take me one at a time? Here, Mom, this is Bones. Bones, yes, this is my mother Winona.”

Leo rolled his eyes and rubbed a hand against his toweled leg before extending it out to Winona. “Leonard,” he corrected, giving her the most earnest expression he could manage under the circumstances; but she only regarded him with suspicion, one hip cocked to match her eyebrow. 

“You a sex worker, ‘Bones’?”

Leo blinked back in surprise, but Jim scoffed behind him. “No! Would I really go through the trouble of introducing you formally if he was a sex worker? Mom. _God._ ”

Leo let his hand drop as he turned slowly to regard Jim with an expression of extreme incredulity. Jim hastened to continue. “He’s a friend,” he said, dropping his impression of a teenager. “A … good … friend?”

“Not for long,” Leo muttered under his breath.

“A _friend_.” She enunciated the word slowly. “Named _Bones._ ”

“From the Academy! He’s a doctor, would you stop?”

Winona blinked through her surprise, and, reluctantly, she turned to evaluate Leo more closely. “You really a doctor?”

“Yes ma’am.” Leo gave a repentant nod. “University of Mississippi, class of ‘51. Feel free to check my credentials if y’feel so inclined.”

“Stop being Southern, charm won’t help you,” Jim muttered.

“I just unknowingly committed a misdemeanor against this woman,” Leo shot back acidly, “so I’m going to employ as much charm as I see fit to attempt to rectify the unsavoury impression--”

“Oh shut up, you’re such a kiss-ass.”

“Sure, Pike Junior.”

Jim gasped audibly. “Don’t you fucking dare, Bones, my mother is _right there_ \--”

“ _Why the devil would you break into her house?_ I thought we had permission! What in blazes is the matter with--”

“ _Boys!_ ” Winona shouted, and both Leo and Jim cut abruptly off and blinked back at her in shock. To Leo’s surprise, she was looking between them with a slight smile on her face, taking stock of the pair of them with something that distantly approached affection. She sized them up for several long seconds in silence, then slowly, evenly planted her hands on her hips. “You … brought a doctor home for winter break?” she finally asked of Jim.

Jim clenched his jaw and growled almost inaudibly deep in his chest. “Yes,” he articulated finally. “Which I see now was a _mistake_.” He shot Leo an annoyed glare.

Leo only rolled his eyes, but Winona’s expression suddenly broke into a wide, warm grin as she stepped toward him with her arm extended. “I am so sorry, what’s your given name again? Given by your mother, I mean.”

“Leonard McCoy, or Leo if you prefer,” he plied, and Jim made gagging noises behind him as he stepped forward to shake her hand. “It sure is nice to meet you, ma’am. I’m sorry it had to be under these circumstances.”

“Me too,” she said honestly, “and I will look you up if you don’t mind.”

“Be my guest. I’m going to go put some clothes on and leave you to murder your son in peace.”

“That sounds great. Thanks, Leonard.”

“Ma’am,” he said as he slinked away. Behind him, the argument resumed its previous intensity, and Leo opted to take longer than absolutely necessary to make himself presentable for--

_For what, McCoy? Your mother-in-law?_

Well, now. Wasn’t that a telling slip.

By the time Leo wandered his way back into the wider apartment, they were in the kitchen, Jim slouched in his chair and looking about sixteen years old as Winona asked him a series of very direct questions. Jim answered each question despondently, unmovingly, while Winona fluttered around the kitchen. One hand was braced loosely around a beer as he stared at the ceiling. Leo resisted the urge to reach out and tangle their fingers together.

“Do you know I had to find out you’d joined the Academy from a bulletin?”

“Yes, Ma.”

“I thought I’d gone back in time, seeing ‘Cadet’ and ‘Kirk’ in sequence like that. Turn the page and see that it’s you. How on earth you managed that with your record, I have no idea.”

“Yes, Ma.”

“I hailed this Captain Pike and he told me he found you in a barfight. If that hadn’t been the story I’m not sure I would’ve believed you were anywhere near the Academy at all.”

“Yes, Ma.”

“This didn’t warrant a comm message at the very least?”

Jim straightened up and flinched heavily as he finally noticed Leo sitting down at the table across from him. “What was I going to say? ‘Hey Mom, I joined Starfleet, wanna watch as I repeat history?’”

Winona tutted angrily and turned to look at Leo. “Do you want a beer, Leonard?” she said, voice far kinder than her expression implied should have been possible.

“Desperately,” he began, rising halfway from his chair; but Winona was already spinning toward the fridge.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she plied, waving him down. She seemed to take great enthusiasm in aggressively twisting the lid from its top and looked back at Jim even as she handed the beer to Leo. “Repeat history, Jim, really?”

“Look, _Admiral_ , I didn’t really want to explain my justifications--”

“So your alternative was to avoid me for a full year and a half?”

Jim smacked his lips against the long pull he’d taken from his beer. “Yup.”

“I came to your dorm.”

“I was off-planet,” he said delicately.

“So I discovered! Spoke with Captain Pike, _again_ \--”

“Yeah, can you stop doing that, like, immediately?”

“--and discovered you were on the Farragut--”

“Good ship.”

“--which led to a good bit of worry as everything went down on Axanar, let me tell you.”

Leo’s hand had slid involuntarily over his mouth, and Winona pointed aggressively at him. “He looks like he was worried out of his skull, too. Do you have any understanding of the impact of your actions on others?”

Leo held his hands aloft as Jim rolled his eyes. “Don’t bring me into this,” he implored.

“It’s a Kirk family tradition,” she said unapologetically. “You’re in this now whether you like it or not.”

“So I’m discovering,” he muttered.

“Do you see what it’s like to be subjected to her ire?” Jim hissed across the table.

“Don’t bring me into this!” he repeated.

“You’re no help,” Jim grunted.

“And you,” she continued, nodding in Leo’s direction, “why didn’t you get in touch with me?”

“I…” Leo looked nervously at Jim, who sighed and nodded in resignation at the telling of the whole truth. “To be honest, Admiral--”

“If you don’t start calling me Winona I’m poisoning your dinner,” she said, brandishing a meat thermometer at him.

“Winona,” he corrected, helpless to prevent the smile cracking across his face, “I haven’t heard much about you. I wouldn’t have known the first thing about how to get in touch with you. I didn’t even know you were still with Starfleet.”

“But you knew I was with Starfleet once.”

“It’s in the history books,” he managed, words sticking determinedly in his throat.

She froze, bent partway over the ham that she’d slid out from inside the oven. “Right,” she said shortly. “Bear in mind in the future, Leonard, that Starfleet has its ways of getting in touch with its alumni.”

“Yes ma’am.”

She turned on her heel to face him, expression blank. “Do you like ham?”

“If it isn’t replicated, I’ll eat almost anything put in front of me.”

“Good man.” She returned to the food. “And this is how you repay me.”

Leo blinked in confusion, but Jim’s head fell suddenly backwards so he could again stare at the ceiling, and Leo realized he was no longer being addressed. “ _Again,_ ” Jim began slowly, “I didn’t know what to say.”

“What’s wrong with ‘hi Mom, I’m actually going to come home this year’?”

Jim groaned, then tightened his voice to raise it an octave. “‘Why this year, Jim? Why now? Why not all the other years? Where have you been all this time? Why don’t you ever comm me? Stop committing felonies!’”

“ _You should have stopped committing felonies,_ ” she said sternly.

“And I did.” He brandished his arms out to either side of him. “A year and a half felony-free. New record.”

Leo snorted into his beer despite himself, and Winona regarded him with a cocked eyebrow. “I suppose that means you’re hardly behaving yourself, felony or no,” she said.

“I think you’re missing the important take-home that I stopped committing felonies.”

“Under Leonard’s good influence, I’m sure.”

“Leave me out of it,” Leo pled.

“You’re in it,” they said simultaneously, but it was only Jim who added, “so shut the fuck up.  
And stop taking her side, will you?”

“You’re terribly mean to him,” Winona scolded him.

“He’s mean to me,” Jim corrected; and Leo smiled down at his hands.

Winona again looked between them and let a light smile play at her features as tense seconds marched away from them. “Just showing up one year with a doctor doesn’t fix everything, Jim,” she said, her voice softening.

“I know,” he said, sounding genuinely repentant.

“You could have come a few days later and just knocked at the door.”

“I didn’t think you’d be here.” The lie fell thickly over the room.

“You know perfectly well I’m here every year. _Every_ year, Jim.”

Leo frowned at Jim. He’d said very clearly that his mother wouldn’t be here -- why?

But Jim opted to look at neither one of them, only rolled his bottle around on its rim and stared at the table. “I know,” he said eventually.

“You could have comm’d.”

“This conversation was easier in person.”

Winona blinked repeatedly. “No, it wasn’t,” she realized suddenly.

Jim only continued to roll the bottle on its rim.

She tutted again and turned to stab at the potatoes boiling on the stove, leaving a long silence trailing behind her.

“I’m sorry,” Jim mumbled finally, and Winona whipped around, disarmed, with a fork in her hand.

“For what?” she asked harshly; and Leo suddenly felt very starkly for the first time as though he was definitely intruding.

Jim rolled the bottle for another second more, then set it firmly down and looked his mother dead in the eye. “For not doing better,” he articulated clearly.

Winona seemed not to know what to do with that any better than Leo did, judging by the series of expressions that flashed across her face; but after a few tense seconds, she finally licked her lips and turned to retrieve the ham. “Well, you’re here now,” she muttered to the stove.

“That’s what I’ve been saying.” Jim gestured dramatically.

A heavy silence, a series of beer sips, and several angry food-preparation gestures later, two overfull plates were being placed in front of them. “You both look like you haven’t eaten a proper meal in six weeks so I expect these to be cleared,” Winona said, voice tight. “There’s more if you want it. Save room for dessert, I brought a leftover pie from the Admiral’s dinner.”

Leo exchanged a glance with Jim, who looked back at him with a conflicted expression. _Sorry about this,_ he mouthed as Winona turned back to pile food onto her own plate, but Leo frowned heavily and shook his head with increasing severity. This was nothing compared with the shit he’d put Jim through in Atlanta as far as he was concerned; the apology was ridiculous.

Winona set her plate heavily down and took Jim’s chin firmly into her hand before sitting, looking his face over carefully. “Lucky you’re boning a doctor,” she muttered before locating her seat. 

The grin was slow to spread over Jim’s face as he read Leo’s wide-eyed expression and the blush in his ears. “I love you, Mom,” Jim said affectionately as he stabbed at his food with his fork.

“For god’s sake, Jim,” was her tired reply as she plied her own mouth with food and rested her head wearily in her hand, and it was Leo’s turn to look between them with hesitant interest.

“So, Leonard,” Winona said at last, five food-devouring minutes later, enacting a tone of levity that suggested there had never been any tension in the first place. “Tell me about yourself. Most importantly, tell me what on earth Jim has done to land in your good graces. I’m very interested in that.”

Leo smiled tiredly. “He didn’t give me much of a choice.”

She nodded and patted Jim’s hand fondly. “Sounds like Jim,” she said pointedly.

“You’re telling me.”

Across the table, Jim sighed. “This is gonna be a long fucking week,” he muttered.

“Baby pictures later,” Winona promised with a fork pointed at Leo; and he gave a huff of laughter as he and Jim resigned themselves to the task of recapping the last year and a half at the Academy.

\---

Three hours later, when they had stuffed themselves to the gill with food and beer, Leo had followed Jim into the master bedroom and set a gentle hand at his arm.

“Jim,” he said only, voice low.

Jim let himself be guided, spun toward him easily but with a look of subdued surprise, as though lost in his head. “Bones,” he replied, a weak smile playing at his lips; but there was an emptiness to it, a hollow sound in the nickname Leo had never heard before, and it was enough to bring Leo to pull Jim close, hooking an elbow around his neck.

Jim made a noise of distant confusion, tensing at first; then, with Leo’s other arm snaking around his back, he relaxed bit by bit, one muscle group at a time, until he was leaning his forehead against Leo’s shoulder, hands clenched in his shirt.

“I don’t know why that was so hard, Bones,” Jim had murmured, voice low; and Leo had placed his lips over the pulse in Jim’s temple and moved to run two steady fingers over the nape of his neck.

“Doesn’t matter,” he’d muttered back; “it’s done.”

“She looks older.” His voice retreated into a whisper.

“I bet you look unfathomable to her.”

Jim gave a slight quailing noise, his hands tightening in Leo’s shirt. “I’m sorry I lied,” he whispered.

“No you’re not,” Leo rumbled. “I get it. It was this or nothing. I’m glad it was this.”

“She likes you.”

“Yeah.” Leo pulled back and looked Jim in the eye, giving a slight smile. “I’m good with moms.”

“Um, about that. Please stop flirting with her.”

“It’s Southern charm!”

“Okay, but it’s gross.”

Laughter ghosted out of Leo’s chest, and he pressed his lips to Jim’s nose. “Okay.”

Jim’s hands snapped to either side of Leo’s face and moved his lips down to meet his own. “Thanks, Bones.”

“Yeah, kid,” he muttered, words lost somewhere in the tangle; but as Leo slid his hands under Jim’s shirt and gripped him closer against him, the message was the same: _I’m here. I’m here. I’m here._

\---

They had fucked desperately and silently, harsh breath and whispered endearments the markers of time; and then Jim had fallen into the exhausted sleep of a man who’d conquered a mountain. 

Leo, meanwhile, had lain awake for a solid two hours before finally resigning himself to the insomnia. Somewhere in his mind, his internal clock ticked over from December 23rd into Christmas Eve. His uneasiness increased.

He untangled himself from Jim’s sleeping form and threw on a thin layer of clothing to combat against the early-morning chill of the condo. The door opened and closed silently as he slipped from the bedroom and, with the sort of stealth Leo infrequently had the opportunity to employ being close as he was with Jim Kirk, harbinger of chaos, he padded mutely across the living room to stare out over Riverside’s growing cityscape.

“Can’t sleep either, huh?” came a quiet voice from behind him.

Leo started and turned tensely before realizing it was only Winona smiling at him from the dark of the living room. “Sorry,” she said as Leo hastened to relax his stance. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

“Not at all,” he replied, waving a hand. “Your house. I didn’t see you there, I apologize, I don’t want to intrude--” he made a gesture to return to the bedroom.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, turning to grab a bottle of brandy from the table beside her. “Care to join me?”

Leo raised his eyebrows in a moment of contemplation, then nodded and moved to the sofa kitty-corner to the chair Winona was occupying. “Thanks. For everything. Your generosity, adaptability ... I’m sorry to’ve just showed up like this.”

Winona shook her head as she poured Leo a healthy finger. “It’s the only way Jim would have ever come back, if he’d brought a rock to help him through it. I’m glad you came.”

“He didn’t tell me you’d be here, either, if that helps.” Leo flinched as soon as he’d said it, but Winona seemed unperturbed.

“I’m not surprised. I’m not sure he wanted to believe it himself until the fact of me was already standing in front of him.” She handed Leo a glass and held her own aloft in cheers. “We’re in the same boat here, Leonard. No need for apologies.”

Leo smiled, raised his own glass, and sipped lightly at the drink. It was good; he was impressed with her taste. “Shared insomnia and everything.”

Winona nodded thoughtfully. “A norm for me at this time of year, I’m afraid.”

“I hear that.”

“Thought it’d be better if I could coax Jim home, but … well.” She shook her head and gave a burst of what might have been laughter in a different mood. “I was just thinking, before you came in,” she said slowly, “about what Jim said. About being sorry he didn’t do better.” She paused and took a slight, slow slip from her glass. “Jim was troubled after … after he turned thirteen. He hated it here, he hated being around me. I think he hated damn near anything he got close enough to see. Two years later he was arrested for the first time, and I told him he needed to clean up his act, so he left. He just left, in the middle of the night, on his uncle’s old clunker of a hoverbike that I wasn’t aware he knew I kept in storage out back.” 

Her expression flashed pained entertainment at the memory, at the same realization that Leo was having: that Jim had always been smart as hell, even when he was balls-deep in shit. “The next six years were phone calls -- Jim had run out of money, Jim was in jail again, Jim was in some random US state and was leaving a message when he knew I’d be off-planet to tell me he was still alive. We actually spoke on the comm … probably once a year. Usually because of a miscalculation on his part about whether I’d be here. Conversations usually lasted about ten minutes. I honestly never for a second truly thought we’d get here.” She gave a wan smile. “I’d hoped it, but I never truly thought it. And once we were … well.” 

She looked up and caught Leo’s eye, and he saw a pained expression he was all too familiar with. “It was well and truly eerie to hear out of his mouth the exact words that were resonating in my head.” She swilled her drink around in her glass. “‘I’m sorry for not doing better.’ God. What a shattering thing for your son to say to you.”

Leo took her words into him gradually, felt them sear into his bones. He nodded, slowly, for a long time; then he leaned forward, setting his elbows on his knees and holding his drink in both hands. “I, uh,” he began, and then himself had to clear his throat. “It’s not the same. But my daughter got sick, when she was three months old.” 

Winona’s eyes snapped to his, gaze filled with rapt attention. “My ex-wife and I are both doctors,” he continued after a moment of staring into his drink. He surprised himself with the clarity in his voice. “We gave her all the immunizations, we knew every possible avenue for prevention, we stayed on-planet for her first months of life, we did everything we were supposed to -- and she happened to contract a new virus, alien, something freshly mutated to affect humans. She wound up in hospital for … weeks. For weeks.” 

He flexed his fingers around his glass. “I had a real hard time sitting with her. I felt like I was waiting for someone else to find the solution while I just had to watch this thing eat at her. I felt like I had let her down, I felt like I was to blame for what was happening to her just because I failed to prevent it.

“It turned out,” he continued, “that she had contracted the Leutscher virus. Usually curable now, but this was a few years ago, there was no known cure at the time, and I wasn’t a good enough pathologist yet to isolate it well enough to make one myself. And once I knew that -- once I knew there was nothing we could have done to prevent it, no negligence on our part that would have stopped this, I felt this bizarre mixture of relief... and _anger_. Anger at _her_ , at Joanna, for being sick. And that was -- that was the worst feeling in the world, to be looking at my child lying in an incubator and to feel _angry with her_ , with an infant, for being susceptible to this. For not having -- a problem I could fix. As a doctor. As a father.”

Leo looked up at Winona to see her staring intensely at him with a mixture of anticipation and horror, and he set his lips in something he hoped approached encouraging. “Jim has never given me details,” he said, softening his tone, “but he’s given me enough for me to have reached the understanding that he was Witness 6. And I --” 

Winona’s expression was contorting before him, into not only horror but _terror_ , and he acquiesced to his drive to reach across the table and set steadying fingertips on her knee. “I understand,” he continued, “why you’re angry. It makes … absolute sense to me. I can’t explain to you why this happens to some parents when their children undergo some ordeal they’re helpless to prevent, but it does. I wanted you to know that--” he shut his eyes against the knot of his throat and brought his extended hand to rub at his forehead. “That you’re not alone in that.”

Leo let several seconds pass before he let his hand fall over his mouth and opened his eyes; and Winona stared back at him with wide eyes, both hands set over her lips as though to hold something within, her thumbs braced hard against her face. “When he came back from Tarsus, he couldn’t let me in. He’s so fucking stubborn.”

“I know.”

“I hated that stubbornness. I hated my own ignorance of the situation on Tarsus before I sent Jim up there. I was angry at myself, more than him.” She stopped; the concluding premise hung between them, unstated.

Leo held her eye, nodded; then withdrew, allowing the two of them to marinade in their respective grief for a time.

“Did she pull out of it?” Winona whispered, hesitant and restrained, after a long silence.

The quiet of her words forced the exhale from Leo’s body; and slowly, haltingly, his head shook, starting right and then left, then right again for good measure, and stopping back at centre as though automatic.

Winona’s hands flattened more completely over her mouth, and they watched each other carefully until Leo finally moved to take a drink. 

“You’re a very young man to have experienced such a thing,” she managed at last; and, incredulously, he felt a smile twitch at his lips.

“That’s what I’m told,” he replied, voice graveling. “I admit I don’t feel very young these days. 30 can’t come soon enough.”

Winona’s eyebrows shot up. “You will rue that statement,” she advised him frankly, her hands finally falling into her lap as she reached for the bottle off the side table.

Leo exhaled appreciatively. “I guess I probably will,” he drawled, and he watched as she poured another unsteady drink. “Jim will, though,” he continued quietly. “Pull through, I mean. He is one resilient bastard. He’s on some path right now that I don’t always understand, but that hasn’t led him wrong.” Leo shrugged. “It led him here, if ... delinquently. He did what he needed to do to get done what needed to get done. His methods need some work, but he’s pure of heart. It’s--” Leo surprised himself with a sudden gust of laughter. “It’s one of my favourite things about him.”

He shot a warm half-smile in Winona’s direction, and she lightly shook her head. “You _really_ love him.” She sounded as awed as anyone ever did when making the remark, and Leo let the full smile overtake his features as he looked blushingly into his glass. 

“He’ll figure the rest out with time,” was all he said in reply. “There’s not an action he takes that doesn’t have a purpose behind it. That’s a rare quality. It’s one he has down in spades.”

Winona made a distant tutting noise and leaned forward to take Leo’s glass for a refill. “You’re good for a poor mother’s soul, Leo,” she informed him.

“I’ve always been very good with parents,” he replied. “Just not my own.”

Winona gave a sad smile as she offered Leo his glass back. “Are you still in touch with your ex-wife?” she asked quietly.

Leo nodded exhaustedly. “We reconnected this past summer.” He gave a slow blink. “At Jim’s behest,” he added, as though surprised with the recollection.

“Ah,” she said. “So he’s good for you, too.”

Leo smiled knowingly. “Mostly,” he qualified.

She blinked contentedly at Leo for a moment, then reached across and clinked Leo’s glass with her own. “Well, then. Merry Christmas, Leonard.”

“Merry Christmas, Winona.”

“To many more.”

Leo nodded slowly, smile building to a grin. “For as long as Jim survives.”

“Lord,” she replied; rolling her eyes.

They sat together in silence.


End file.
